July 1.  We’re already out of the box by not participating in a traditional school, so why not jump completely out of the box and start at a non-traditional time?  :)  Where we live, it is hot.  And this year, it is very, very hot.  If we are going to be indoors anyhow avoiding the heat (even pool water is hot – ick!), why not get started and when the weather is beautiful for the few weeks of the year known as spring and fall, we can take a break and enjoy the gorgeous weather outside – while everyone else is in school!  Jackpot!

By choosing to use Sonlight curriculum, I was thankful that the lesson plans for History, Bible, Science, and Language Arts were already laid out for me.  This took off a significant amount of stress!  Of course, seeing the giant sized binder that contains lessons plans for 36 weeks of school is enough to cause an ulcer but there are ways to handle this.

Meet the giant binder:

The *gulp* Instructor's Guide

Meet the handy binder:

The Mini-Binder

For the latter binder, I have merely taken seasoned Sonlight moms’ suggestions and removed approximately four weeks’ worth of lessons and put them into a smaller binder that is easier to tote and flip through.  Genius.  A significant amount of note-taking and checking-marking and date-marking occurs during the school day by mommy/teacher so this was a handy piece of advice.

One week's schedule

I also loved how empty rows were provided for extra subjects – such as the Math-U-See that I pulled in.  I merely hand-wrote it on the chart and away we go!  What I have learned so far is to follow Sonlight’s advice and advice mom friends who also homeschool (whether they use Sonlight or other methods or curriculums).  They are gold mines of advice!

• Do not let the Instructor Guide rule our day, merely use it as a guide.  We do not have to do everything in it.  It is merely a suggestion.
• G is really just in kindergarten and our state only requires math and language arts.  Perspective is king.  I know where to place emphasis and what to let go when needed.
• I can take each subject at G’s pace  - often he moves quickly ahead in one subject and we may stay in one place in other subjects until he is ready to move on.  And that’s perfectly great and exactly why we homeschool.

Since July 1, we have tackled and completed:

• Handwriting Without Tears, Letters and Numbers For Me
• Math-U-See, Primer
• The Boxcar Children, No. 1, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
• Kumon’s My First Book of Money:  Counting Coins

We are currently in the midst of:

• Explode the Code, Book A (Language Arts)
• Handwriting Without Tears, My Printing Book
• Math-U-See, Alpha
• The Jesus Storybook Bible (replaced Egermeier’s Bible Story Book – seemed to far above his level at this stage)
• Memorizing one scripture for each letter of the alphabet, currently up to letter D.

History, Geography and a large part of language arts are done through read-alouds and discussion.  Currently, we are reading:

• Living Long Ago (history and geography)
• The Usborne Children’s Encyclopedia (for science, history and geography)
• I Heard Good News Today (missionary stories, history and geography)
• The Llama Who Had No Pajamas
• The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose
• The James Herriott Treasury for Children
• My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

We use word lists and reader books provided by the authors of the Sonlight curriculum, also well-done.  The huge list of books that we haven’t even touched yet continues.  I’ll do pictures of the room and bookshelves another day.  Spelling is incorporated as well.  G is not as fond of this part of homeschooling and would prefer to do math and science all day, but we get through it with motivators.  Namely, more math.  Strange, I know.  ”Hey, G, if we complete these spelling/reading/word lists, we can do another chapter of math!”  Strange child.  He IS his father’s son.

Science uses a combination of read-alouds from Usborne books to cover so many areas of science, then you complete various experiments.  G and S both thoroughly enjoy the experiments and G so quickly grasps the science concepts that it stuns me.  This is Chris’s area and I enjoy watching them all interact at science experiment time one or two evenings a week.  I even caught S trying to replicate an experiment about wind and air the next day on her own.  It was SO cute.

I know.  It seems like A LOT, but when you look at the list, we read from some of these books only once a week, only a few pages or only one page at a time.  We do math every day (of course, G would expect no less) and learning how to read every day, as is handwriting practice.  Science so far is about once or twice a week.  The rest I remain flexible on as it fits our family schedule with a goal to complete all the week’s activities by the end of the week.  We incorporate games as well as weekly speech therapy.  (I can play Chutes and Ladders in my sleep.)

And the best part?  On a good day, we are done in a couple of hours.

I love homeschooling.  I really, really do.

Homeschool

• It’s July 4th!!
• Well, only for 29 more minutes on my side of the world.
• I’ve still got Florence and France and Barcelona to go on our Mediterranean tour.
• I’ll get there.  Because I know ya’ll just can’t wait for the next post.
• Strangely, these random posts are my most popular.
• Ya’ll are just weird.
• Or maybe it’s me.
• Don’t answer that.
• It’s been busy ’round here.
• We got a new roof.
• I’m still hyperventilating from writing that check.
• The kids are in swim lessons and loving every minute of it.  We go to the local university to the indoor pool.
• Speaking of indoor (great transition, wasn’t it?), G is doing great at indoor soccer!
• It’s so fun to watch him score a goal.
• No one is keeping score, it’s all for fun.
• Except for Chris, who is secretly keeping score.
• I wonder if all the daddy’s are doing that?
• My mom and dad (Nana and Pa) will be arriving tomorrow to visit for a week.  Yea!!!!!!!
• Because that means Mommy gets a break from playtime for a week.  Double yea!!!!!
• And….(drumroll please)….we have started kindergarten homeschooling!
• So far, G LOVES it!  He keeps asking to do more and more and more.
• He’s wearing me out, ya’ll.

Going Nowhere, Growing Up, Homeschool

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  The curriculum we chose.   (You can read Part 1 of Homeschool here.)

I read and researched, read and researched.  I asked endless questions of friends in real life and online who I knew homeschool.  I called friends who lived far away, and if I met or heard of friends at church who homeschool I said, “Hi, I’m Tara, I hear you homeschool, I have some questions!”  I was fearless and determined.  If I overheard conversations about homeschooling, I approached and boldly offered my services to continue to listen in.  Everyone was so friendly and ready to offer information and advice.  I loved it!

There are so many excellent curriculums out there for so many subjects that it was hard to choose.  There are even books published on how to homeschool for free!  Entirely possible with your public library and some footwork and the internet, I am sure.  The trick to all of it is figuring out what is right for my family. What are my educational priorities?  How much time can I put into preparation?  What about my teaching/learning style and G’s learning style?  And lesson planning?  I have zero experience in lesson planning on this level!  Piano lesson planning, sure, but this?  Nope.

I had two options:  put together some curriculums for all the needed subjects and then put together lessons plans each day from those subjects or buy an all-in-one type of curriculum that does it for me.  I was leaning heavily toward the latter for this first year especially because of my lack of experience – to ease any frustration level, and to give us the best possible advantage as we get started.

That said, we chose Sonlight.  Sonlight is a literature-based Christian homeschool curriculum that lays out the lessons plans for you (yea!!) for all your chosen subjects.  You can read about it on their website, rather than me detailing their selling points here.  I was very impressed with everything I read about them and heard about them.  Any negative comments came from families who said that Sonlight just didn’t work for their family, but that it was a great program.  This was very encouraging.  And we have 18 weeks to decide if it works for our family and if it doesn’t – full refund!  Can’t beat that!  They even have an article on their site detailing 27 reasons why Sonlight might not work for us.  Did you read that?  Might NOT work for us.  Very interesting reading and honest.  I was impressed.  Yes, it’s pricey, but we believe it’s worth it for us at this time.

One thing I am going to change is the math program.  We are going to opt out of their math program and instead choose one called Math-U-See.  This program was developed by a homeschool dad and I have heard nothing but rave reviews about it.  It uses math manipulatives for a very hands on approach and we think G will really enjoy that.   Not to mention Dad.  And Mom.

So what about art, music, PE?  No worries, G is very artistic, and we’ll get that covered.  I have great artist friends and there are art courses in the homeschooling world I can take advantage of, even classes I can enroll him in.  Don’t forget I am a piano teacher, and we have soccer, swimming, and lots of sports options.  These children will not be neglected in any way!  :)

I hope you won’t tire of reading about my homeschooling thoughts…this topic isn’t going away anytime soon!  It’s going to be a very big part of our lives in the next year!

Growing Up, Homeschool

Yes, we have decided to homeschool.

We are excited, perhaps a little nervous, but more excited than nervous, about this new adventure that will be our school this year!  I look forward to sharing all the details with you be they fun, exhausting, nerve-wracking, maddening, or exhilarating.

I am already anticipating your questions!  Your first question?   Why did we decide to homeschool?  This is a unique decision to every family – just as there are unique personalities in this world, there are unique homeschooling families.  If you are curious about this topic, I highly recommend the book So You’re Thinking About Homeschooling by Lisa Whelchel.  This book portrays fifteen unique families, their situations and why and how they homeschool.  Excellent reading.

We are taking this year by year, month by month, and day by day.  We are taking G’s kindergarten year as it is – his first year – and see how it goes!  G is a very sensitive, personable personality who loves to work one on one with whoever is around him.  This, plus other personality factors, a mild speech delay, and my personal teaching philosophy and other convictions led us to choose homeschooling.

Your next question?  Ahhhhhh, yes.  The Big S.  SOCIALIZATION.  Let me stop you right there.  Every child, public school or private school or homeschool is as socialized as each parent or guardian determines.  Think back on your school experiences.  Some children participated in nothing, some in everything.  The same goes for homeschoolers.  As a parent, there are numerous opportunities to socialize with people of all ages throughout the day.  Just because we do school at “home” does not mean we stay at home all day!  School can happen anywhere!  Think of your day running errands:  Target, the grocery store, the bank, changing your oil, the doctor’s office, etc.  Some many chances to talk to people of all ages and personalities!  Field trips, sports, dance classes, piano lessons, church – the opportunities are really endless.   Excellent social skills for children, no matter how they are schooled, happen in every day situations with people of all ages.

Your third question?  How does G feel about this?  That kid is excited! We have talked with him about it several times and he is so excited he can hardly stand himself.  As soon as we told him we were setting aside the “formal dining room” of our home for a “classroom”, he immediately went and got his “Bob Books” (early readers) and his toys and ran to that room and sat down and said we had to start class.  ”Let’s go, Mom!  We have to have class now!”  He routinely calls me “teacher” and wants to have class.  I have already started buying workbooks (Kumon Workbooks) and he loves them, soaks it all up like a sponge.  My goal in doing small activities like this in our classroom is to start planting the idea that that room is the classroom, a work room, and not a playroom.  We have our old breakfast table in there now, a bookshelf (and plans for more), some posters on the wall, plans to move G’s computer in there, and other decorating ideas.  I can’t wait to share pictures with you all as we go!  The room is not clean at the moment so “before” pictures will have to wait.

Ah, your fourth question!  I can hear it already.  What in the world are we going to use to teach him?  I’m so glad you asked!  Initially, I was overwhelmed with the plethora of information out there about homeschooling – books, the internet, more books, more internet, blogs, oh my!  Where did I even begin??  Well, by jumping in…so I did.  I checked out some books from the library and started reading.  I surfed the internet and googled endlessly.  Until my eyes crossed and uncrossed.  Now, if I had just started with this book, I would have saved myself a lot of time:  100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum by Cathy Duffy. Genius book.  Truly.  Ms.

Duffy first examines your own learning style, teaching style, philosophy of education, then your child’s learning style, reviews homeschool curriculum styles (unit studies, Charlotte Mason, literature-based, Classical, etc.) then has a chart for you

complete to reveal what styles match yours the best.  Very revealing.  Next, she reviews the most popular curriculums out there for the various subject areas, listing various other resources as well.  I saw several websites and blogs list her book as a top resource for parents to purchase and it didn’t take me long to see why!

Continued tomorrow…

PS…I need a “G” category for homeschooling.  Ideas?  :)

Growing Up, Gulps, Homeschool